There is an established legal principle that people should not have to repay their government’s debt to the extent that it is incurred to launch aggressive wars or to oppress the people. These “odious debts” are considered to be the personal debts of the tyrants who incurred them, rather than the country’s debt.

The folks at The Huffington Post have come up with a simple, novel idea that might help right some of the wrongs of the last year, a year that has seen Wall Street faring much better than Main Street since the economy hit bottom over the summer – move your money from a big bank to a small community bank.

North Dakota is the only state in the union to own its own bank. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) was established by the state legislature in 1919 specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. Its populist organizers originally conceived of the bank as a credit union-like institution that would provide an alternative to predatory lenders, but conservative interests later took control and suppressed these commercial lending functions. The BND now chiefly acts as a central bank, with functions similar to those of a branch of the Federal Reserve.

However, the BND differs from the Federal Reserve in significant ways. The stock of the branches of the Fed is 100% privately owned by banks. The BND is 100% owned by the state, and it is required to operate in the interest of the public. Its stated mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota.

And would have a pretty good case, if the system worked as designed.

Mainstream financial news source MarketWatch is telling Americans to prepare for the worst, the end of America. In their Article, “How to invest for a global-debt-bomb explosion,” Not only do they talk about the coming total economic collapse but they admit that there is a cabal of elite who are orchestrating it. Author of the article, Paul Farrel extends the view, as if it is widely accepted, that there is a “Happy Conspiracy” of global elitists that is operating behind the scenes to create a coming major economic disaster. The article goes on to say prepare by stockpiling necessities because a 2nd American Revolution is imminent.

The folks at The Huffington Post have come up with a simple, novel idea that might help right some of the wrongs of the last year, a year that has seen Wall Street faring much better than Main Street since the economy hit bottom over the summer – move your money from a big bank to a small community bank.

Not just for dummies; this is a must-read

This video series (7 parts) goes page-by-page of “Modern Money Mechanics,” a pamphlet by the Federal Reserve of Chicago, no longer in print but available on the internet, which describes “the basic process of money creation in a ‘fractional reserve’ banking system.

Such unbridled greed came close to bringing down the entire financial system, which American taxpayers have been allowed to pick up the bill for. After all this we see absolutely no regulation in sight and the SEC and the CFTC continue to protect the titans of Wall Street as government looks on in total disinterest. This, of course, omits the Executive Order borne criminality, which has turned our free markets into controlled and manipulated fascist markets. People say what can I do? You can start by throwing almost every incumbent out of office and buy pressing the Senate relentlessly to pass the bill that includes an audit and investigation of the Fed.

Backing up Blankfein’s plea of ignorance and incomprehension is this: The crisis killed Lehman Brothers and would have killed every one of them had not the Treasury and Fed, neither of which saw it coming, either, intervened with hundreds of billions in bailout cash. Yet there were those who warned a housing bubble was being created like the dot-com bubble; others who predicted the Empire of Debt was coming down. As, today, there are those warning that the United States, with consecutive deficits running 10 percent of gross domestic product, is risking an eventual default on its national debt.

Joseph Stiglitz understands half the US economic disaster when he explains current policy is “no way to run an economy that’s going to work,” “there’s moral hazard everywhere,” and newly-invented and unregulated financial markets have only increased risk, not decreased it.

Americans must prepare themselves for a massive collapse in the dollar as investors around the world dump their US assets, a former Bank of England policymaker has warned.

The United States faces projected 10-year federal budget deficits that seriously threaten its bond market, exchange rate, economy, and the economic future of every American worker and family. Those risks are exacerbated by the context of those deficits: a low household-savings rate, even after recent increases; large funding requirements for federal debt maturities every year; heavy overweighting of dollar-denominated assets in foreign portfolios; worsened fiscal prospects in the decades after the current 10-year budget period; and competing claims for capital to fund deficits in other countries.

Step 2: Bet against those same mortgage-related securities and make massive bets against the U.S. housing market so that your firm will make massive profits when the U.S. economy collapses.

Step 3: Have ex-Goldman executives in key positions of power in the U.S. government so that bailout money can be funneled to entities such as AIG that Goldman has made these bets with so that they can get paid after they win their bets.

Step 4: Collect the profits – Goldman Sachs is having their “most successful year” and will end up reporting approximately $50 billion in revenue for 2009.

Across the nation, state tax collections in the first three quarters of 2009 posted their steepest decline in at least 46 years, according to a report this month from the public policy research arm of the State University of New York. At least 30 states raised taxes in their most recently completed fiscal year — which ended in most cases in mid-2009. Even more cut services. All told, states raised $117 billion to fill last year’s budget gaps, the Pew Center on the States estimates.

The unemployment insurance system is in crisis. A record 20 million Americans collected unemployment benefits last year, and so far 25 states have run out of funds and been forced to borrow from the federal government, raise taxes or cut benefits. Using near real-time data on states’ revenues and the benefits they pay out, we’ve estimated how long their trust funds will hold up. And while states’ poor fiscal planning is a serious topic on its own, our unemployment insurance tracker also follows the increasing human toll: so far businesses in 36 states face tax increases this year, ranging from a few dollars per worker to more than a thousand. Six states have moved to cut, freeze or otherwise restrict benefits, a number that is likely to increase.

Calling New Jersey on “the edge of bankruptcy,” Gov. Chris Christie today declared a fiscal emergency, seizing broad powers to freeze aid to more than 500 school districts and cut from higher education, hospitals and the Public Advocate.

Along with eliminating programs “that sounded good in theory but failed in practice” across state departments, Christie is cutting $475 million in aid to school districts, $62 million in aid to colleges and $12 million to hospital charity care.

An Obama executive order that creates a council of state governors who will work with the feds to expand military involvement in domestic security has stoked fears that the administration is stepping up preparations for martial law.

The order, which is entitled Establishment of the Council of Governors (PDF), creates a body of ten state governors directly appointed by Obama who will work with the federal government to help advance the “synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States”.

The governors will liaise with officials from Northcom, Homeland Security, the National Guard as well as DoD officials from the Pentagon “in order to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State governments,” according to the executive order.

The Obama administration is lowering the volume in a long-running argument between Congress and the executive branch over when, if ever, a president has the power to bypass federal statutes he has signed into law. The administration will consider itself free to disregard new laws it considers unconstitutional, especially in cases where it has previously voiced objections elsewhere, White House officials said. The White House disclosed the shift when asked why it had not put out a signing statement last month, when Obama signed a $447 billion spending bill for 2010 that contained several provisions that restricted executive power in ways that the administration had previously asserted were unconstitutional.

Looks like the steadily growing list of constitutional, ethical and political outrages that constitute the Harry Reid version of Obamacare is sparking a rebellion in the states, as AP reports South Carolina’s attorney general plans to investigate the vote-buying that surrounded the proposal in the Senate majority leader’s office.

According to AP, South Carolina’s Henry McMaster is being joined by the attorneys general of Michigan and Washington state in a suit to determine the constitutionality of the Obamacare proposal. Their initiative was prompted by a request from South Carolina’s two senators, Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint, both Republicans.

“The alarming upshot of the court’s decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week — just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans’ phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process — the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer.”

Plans for a North America security perimeter might have seemed like a pipe dream just a short time ago, but it could become a reality sooner than one thinks. Some believe that a perimeter approach to security would be a more effective way of providing safety while ensuring the free flow of trade and investment. For those pushing for deep continental integration, this move is seen as the next logical step. A recent article from the Toronto Star, Canada warms to idea of a tougher ‘perimeter’ suggests that Canadians might now be ready to debate the concept of perimeter security. David Biette who specializes in U.S.-Canada relations and is a member of the Woodrow Wilson Center stated that a, “Perimeter is no longer a dirty word.

Roger Tucker considers the linguistic root, visual representation, usage and practise of fascism, and examines the circumstances under which the concept, “which is neither good nor bad in itself”, becomes malevolent. To illustrate, he looks at two contemporary examples of fascism: the USA and Israel.

”Fascism … it is a social pathology and it can legitimately be considered humanity’s most urgent public health problem. If enough people come to understand what the disease is and how to diagnose it, perhaps there will emerge a means to inoculate ourselves. At this point American and Jewish fascism appear to have converged into an aggressive pathological force that endangers humanity more than any such phenomenon in the past.”

Joseph Stiglitz understands half the US economic disaster when he explains current policy is “no way to run an economy that’s going to work,” “there’s moral hazard everywhere,” and newly-invented and unregulated financial markets have only increased risk, not decreased it.

Michael Geist: “Negotiations in the 7th round of the ACTA [ed: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — a brutal, secret Internet treaty] talks open this morning in Mexico with civil enforcement issues on the agenda. Yesterday I posted on the developments to-date, including a chronology of talks, issues, and leaks that have led to this week’s round of discussions. Part Two of the ACTA Guide provides links to the underlying documentation. Governments have been very tight lipped about the talks. Initially, only a brief summary following the conclusion of each round of the talks was provided. More recently, the agenda of each meeting is disclosed and a summary document (largely confirming Internet leaks) has been provided. Of far greater importance are the leaked documents. These have confirmed how the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is designed to extend far beyond counterfeiting and how it would reshape domestic law in many countries.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is actively issuing directions banning private sales of guns without licenses at gun shows in Texas, despite there being no law to justify such demands.

According to an obscure report in the European Union Times (EUTimes.net), “Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that US President Barack Obama has issued an order to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to ‘begin immediately’ increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

In the wake of the Flight 253 provocation, over-hyped terrorism panics, and last year’s Big Pharma and media-engineered hysteria over the H1N1 flu pandemic, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11.

Among other things, the Executive Order (EO) established a Council of Governors, an “advisory panel” chosen by the President that will rubber-stamp long-sought-after Pentagon contingency plans to seize control of state National Guard forces in the event of a “national emergency.”

According to the White House press release, the ten member, bipartisan Council was created “to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards.”

“When appointed” the announcement continues, “the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”

Clearly designed to weaken the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which bars the use of the military for civilian law enforcement, EO 13528 is the latest in a series of maneuvers by previous administrations to wrest control of armed forces historically under the democratic control of elected state officials, and a modicum of public accountability.

The United States has suspended its evacuations of critically injured Haitians until a dispute over who will pay for their care in Florida and other states is settled.

The world’s TV is showing, as we might expect, a false picture of reality. In the case of Haiti, this is all the more outrageous given the circumstances. With barely disguised racism they paint the picture of a people who are suffering but “ignorant” and “barbarous”, incapable of “keeping order” by themselves after the earthquake, necessitating a renewed colonial occupation, with a fresh US invasion.

Of course, no-one mentions the two-hundred-year sentence capitalism and imperialism imposed on the Haitian people for having carried out the only successful slaves’ social revolution in history. Still less do they tell us about recent events, like the significant workers’, students’ and peasants’ struggles against colonial occupation and Preval’s puppet government which developed in 2009.

“Shareable tells the story of sharing. We cover the people, places, and projects that are bringing a shareable world to life. And share tools and tips to help you make a shareable world real in your life. In a shareable world, things like car sharing, community gardening, and cohousing bring us together, make life more fun, and free up time and money for the important things in life. When we share, not only is a better life possible, but so is a better world. The remarkable successes of Wikipedia, Kiva, open source software, Burning Man, Freecycle, and Creative Commons point the way. They tell a hopeful story about human nature and our future, one we don’t hear enough in the mainstream media.”

Every week 39 pubs shut down. Petrol stations lie abandoned. Post Offices are closing. But as Miles Brignall reports, community companies may be the answer. From the far north of Scotland to the western tip of Cornwall, a quiet revolution is taking place. Britons, no longer prepared to take the closure of a community’s essential amenities lying down, are joining forces to take them back into local ownership. Pubs that had lain empty for several months are being brought back to life by villagers. Stores that closed down after no buyer could be found are reopening as community-owned co-ops. And in some villages they have even got together to reopen their local petrol stations through limited-liability community companies.

Welcome to the fast-expanding world of the not-for-profit community buyout, which in most cases is funded by local people, putting up their own money and taking shares in any profit. The Plunkett Foundation estimates there are now close to 200 community-owned rural shops in the UK, with four new ventures opening this month alone.